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So apparently Saudi Arabia is likely to do an Iran and just splinter after the current King pops his clogs (he’s currently a virtual vegetable hooked up to a vast array of medical machinery). What kind of goodies will the squabbling Princes and religious factions in Saudi get their mitts on?

This is, apparently, what the Israeli army announces over loudspeakers to the inhabitants of Bethlehem and other towns it has invaded. Snipers are at work, picking off those who do not comply: shoppers, children playing, people walking by windows. Meanwhile, antiwar rabbis form human shields to stop fundamentalist Israeli ethnic cleansers shooting Palestianian olive tree gardeners.

Since the civil unrest entered its modern phase in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, almost one million (!) Irish people have been detained without habeus corpus under the terms of the UK’s notorious PTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act). A staggeringly small percentage have ever been charged with any offence, never mind a terrorist one. The PTA was introduced as a “temporary measure” but in 1998 was made permanent. This is despite the European Court of Human Rights finding it illegal under EU law. PTA detainees have sometimes been held for days or weeks without access to legal counsel, food and water, and medical care. Under duress and torture, dozens of Irish people were forced to sign fraudulent confessions that resulted in them spending years, sometimes decades, illegally imprisoned and denied trial by jury.

Britain does not have a written constitution and denies its citizens even the basic protections inherent in a Bill of Rights. People in the US are lucky that it’s more difficult for State-sponsored abduction and torture to be legalized. But it’s not impossible. It’s so sad to have seen this happen in Britain and Ireland and then to see the same fascist impulses overcome people’s better natures here as well.

This war’s a weird morass. The Chinese are buying dud, unexploded cruise missiles from Bin Laden for several million dollars a pop, while a Taliban leader, interviewed in a Pakistan paper, is already planning for a retreat from the cities and a war of attrition against “invaders” expected to last years.